1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to customized story experience creation and evolution, and particularly to interactive narrative utilizing a narrative agent for automatic management of personalized stories in a single or multi-player virtual environment.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
At least three general approaches to providing interactive narrative are prevalent in the art. According to a first approach espoused by the Oz group under the direction of Joseph Bates at Carnegie Mellon University, a user is allowed to make choices within the confines of a narrative presence directed by a centralized drama manager. That is, the drama manager of the Bates system directs the story from a centralized position assuming comprehensive knowledge and narrative control of all interactions in the system. According to a second approach, stories are generated from simulations of narratively causal interactions, such as is described by Chris Crawford, citation below. According to a third approach, plot graphs or nodal architectures are utilized. These systems have a limited number of predetermined story possibilities depending on how the user chooses to traverse the nodal architecture.
FIG. 1 is illustrative of the Bates system, and the first approach, and is excerpted from “Dramatic Presence”, Margaret Thomas Kelso, Peter Weyhrauch and Joseph Bates, submitted to PRESENCE, and published online. The “physical world” shown in FIG. 1 is an observable environment within which a story takes place. The interactor is a user who makes choices while interacting with other characters in the physical world. The “characters” are completely computer generated and controlled objects. A centralized “drama manager” directs the actions of the characters and other objects within the physical world and communicates with the interactor through an interface using a “theory of presentation”. By doing so, the drama manager attempts to guide the interactor through a predetermined narrative, while allowing the interactor to interact freely with the characters and the physical world.
FIG. 2 is illustrative of the simulation approach, or second approach, and is taken from U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,784 to Crawford. Each oval shown in FIG. 2 represents a sub-story (“SS”). A user may experience a story consisting of several sub-stories. The story is experienced as each sub-story links narratively to possible subsequent sub-stories. The interactions form a simulation of narrative possibilities, allowing the user to direct the story interactively by making selections. The overall story depends on which sub-stories are presented based on the user's actions. In this way, the story is constructed piecewise from locally connected sub-stories, as the simulation progresses.
The system described in the '784 patent does not have the concept of a larger story arc (or arcs) with which to shape a specific narrative experience. As a result, the user's overall experience may or may not include traditional narrative stages such as climax or denoument. The system described by Crawford in the '784 patent simulates a local narrative causality, but is unable to shape entire stories with traditional narrative effect.
FIG. 3 is illustrative of a nodal architecture approach, or the third approach, and is taken from Kelso, supra, at p. 5, although the approach is widely known in the art. The overall story depends on which nodes along the architecture are traversed according to selection by the user. The system is interactive since the user typically influences the story by making choices or taking actions at each node in the graph. The system is narrative in the sense that the sum and ordering of the nodes traversed is predetermined in defining story possibilities. The system is restrictive in the sense that the user follows one path of a limited predetermined set of possible paths and interaction is limited to the specific actions allowed at each node as the narrative progresses.
Each of the above conventional approaches is limited in that the user may only contemporaneously experience a single story to its narrative conclusion. In addition, none of those approaches scales well to a system involving a large number of simultaneous users interacting in a shared space.